Golden Notebook, The.
First Edition Of The Golden Notebook,
Inscribed To Pamela Hansford Johnson
Together With A Copy Of The Uncorrected Proof
Lessing, Doris. The Golden Notebook. London: Michael Joseph, (1962).
Thick 8vo.; beige printed wrappers, publisher’s label partially removed; lightly edgeworn.
Boxed together in a specially made slipcase with:
Lessing, Doris. The Golden Notebook. London: Michael Joseph, (1962).
8vo; hinges tender; black cloth; dust-jacket, virtually as new.
Uncorrected proofs of Lessing’s seminal novel, boxed together with a presentation copy of the first edition, inscribed: To Pamela affectionately Doris Lessing. A lovely set of a work rarely found inscribed, much less to meaningful associates. The recipient was another English woman of letters, the novelist and critic Pamela Hansford Johnson (1912-81), wife of C.P. Snow.
The Golden Notebook, one of the most influential texts of the post-war era, dramatizes the fragmentation of female subjectivity experienced by protagonist Anna Wulf. Lessing uses a series of four “notebooks” to articulate different aspects of Wulf’s experience: the “black book” explores her life as a writer; the “red,” politics; the “yellow” fictionalizes Anna’s life, while the “blue” is a type of diary. “A key text for ‘second-wave’ feminism...[a] classic in its time...the questions it raises—about women’s writing, politics, history, psychoanalysis, narrative, and sexual relations—are just as relevant to feminism today” (BGWL, p. 586; see ibid., p. 678, for Pamela Hansford Johnson).
Born in Persia in 1919, Lessing also lived in Rhodesia for a number of years. Her experiences in Africa were incorporated into her first published work, The Grass is Singing (1950). The “Children of Violence” series represents the type of work she is most known for: realistic novels embracing her commitment to socialism and interest in the social forces at play in women’s lives. However, in her novels and short stories, Lessing also deals with the subject of madness and the “Canopus in Argus: Archives” series takes an allegorical look at the future.
(#4734)
Print Inquire